Silence Of The Drones

Several friends of mine are among the 35 American activists assembling in Pakistan in recent days in an effort to seek ground truth on the impact of U.S. drone strikes on civilians there. I will be holding them and their Pakistani hosts and co-travelers in the Light, as my Quaker friends like to say, and will now try to do my part in what follows to put this dangerous journey in perspective.

The American group, organized by Code Pink Women for Peace, is meeting this week with a wide swath of Pakistanis, including representatives of the various political parties. Today, former U.S. diplomat and Army Col. Ann Wright was scheduled to address the Institute of Strategic Studies, Pakistan’s largest think tank, which advises the Foreign Office.

Similar events are scheduled in Islamabad until the weekend, when hundreds of Pakistanis will join the Americans in a caravan of cars and vans on the six-hour drive from Islamabad to Waziristan in the northwest, where the drones do most of their killing and maiming.

As I said good-bye to two of my friends late last week, their backpacks seemed extraordinarily heavy. It occurred to me later that I was visualizing the extra weight of the twin burden of shame they bear for our country’s drone attacks: (1) the toll the drone strikes have taken on Pakistani citizens; and (2) the embarrassment generated by the disingenuous denials by U.S. officials – from President Barack Obama, to his counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, to U.S. diplomats, right down to media cheerleaders and lower-ranking computer functionaries…